I remember as a young paratrooper, standing on a field at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, before one of my first mass tactical parachute jumps. Hundreds of jumpers of all ranks gathered around a raised platform where the senior commander stood and gave us words of wisdom for the jump and subsequent missions for the night.
I do not remember what was said that night, nor can I recall what the senior commander told us on any of the scores of similar nights. When I catch up with my peers and other paratroopers today, we wonder if the leaders who put all that effort into their talks knew we were not retaining their intended message.
As my career progressed, I often observed peers and bosses stand in front of their formations speaking with confidence without considering whether the communication was effective. I believe those leaders were more concerned with motivating and inspiring, and less committed to delivering important operational direction and guidance.
When evaluating effective communication, it is not the ability of a leader to deliver a message that I focus on. The question of effectiveness can be addressed by understanding a leader’s ability to assess the effectiveness of their messaging and to understand how their effective communication impacts organizational performance.
Most soldiers and veterans would agree that effective communication is a critical skill required to lead organizations. The Army published an updated Field Manual 3-0: Operations in October. It reinforces the importance of communication, not just in elements of organizational leadership like the operations process, but also when leading organizations in general. The manual describes the importance of interaction and collaboration while also emphasizing the importance of establishing shared understanding.
But in hierarchal organizations, especially military organizations, leaders often put emphasis and focus on what they are communicating and not how their message is received.
If leaders want to lead organizations focused on performance outcomes, the focus should be less on how they speak or what they say, and more on the purpose of the message and how they can ensure what they want to articulate is received.
Important Role
As an organization trainer for leaders at one of the Army’s premier training centers, one of the early discussions I have with senior leaders (often before the start of a training event) focuses on understanding how they view their role in the communication process. In the field of organizational performance, there is significant research that reinforces the impact a leader can have on organizational performance if they contemplate how their intended audience will receive their message more than focus on how they want to be perceived when delivering that message.
In vertically tilted organizations—think the military or large corporations—leaders have all the advantages when involved in a communication exchange. They have more professional experience and more professional education than anyone else in their organization. In tactical units, the gap in those two areas is often reduced, and the senior leader has 20%–40% more professional experience than the next senior person on their staff.
Even with these advantages, senior leaders often feel the need to mimic the person on the platform before those parachute assaults: I talk, you listen (preferably cheer), and when I am done, of course, you will understand what I was saying exactly as I intended.
The other, less-than-optimal impact that directed communication—messaging to a specific group, usually about a specific event—has on an organization is it makes the organization transactional and not transformational. A transactional organization is one in which members do what they are told because they were told; hierarchal organizations by design default to being transactional, and this default negatively impacts organizational performance and outcomes. Transformational organizations, meanwhile, thrive on effective guidance. Effective guidance is guidance that empowers organization members to do what is being asked because they believe in the direction and feel they are part of the organization’s efforts.
Recent research in this area overwhelmingly supports the transformational approach to leading organizations with effective communication and gaining organizational buy-in being two critical elements in moving a team from transactional to transformational.
Providing Direction
The starting point for organizational leaders committed to effective communication to drive performance begins with setting direction. I refer to direction-setting documents as foundational documents for leadership. These documents include the organization’s vision, strategic goals and objectives, and operational goals and objectives. All three documents should be aligned, with the vision being the most overarching and broad, supported by strategic goals that establish goals and objectives that are more for directing unit efforts and less based on their achievability. Operational goals and objectives, the last of the foundational documents, provide more specific and attainable goals and objectives.
Specific to military operations, the commander’s intent is a critical direction-setting document. Plans should be made based on these goals, and objectives and resources should be allocated based on leadership prioritization of these goals and objectives relative to the overall vision and strategic plan. Organizations committed to performance outcomes will develop an assessment plan to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of all three foundational documents. Operational goals and objectives are assessed more frequently, while the organizational vision is assessed periodically and should be focused on alignment and resource allocation among all three documents.
Leaders need a framework that starts with direction-setting and includes an assessment process to ensure that they are structuring their communication properly. For military leaders, Field Manual 3-0 provides a familiar, descriptive framework for the operations process that also could work as a framework for effective communication.
So where is the disconnect between organizational leaders communicating but not necessarily communicating effectively? In both military and civilian organizations, it is not in the knowledge or education. Military leaders at all levels are introduced to doctrine. Civilian leaders, while not having the benefit of doctrine, receive education about communication through postsecondary education, advanced schooling and, in some larger organizations, through leader development programs. But education and school training alone do not create effective communicators.
Matter of Commitment
Two perceived gaps addressing the issue of effective communication are a commitment to performance outcomes and commitment to comprehension of leader communication. Organizational leaders I have talked with acknowledged that communication was more purposeful when it was tied to the organization’s foundational and directional documents. Ensuring that the organization is guided to performance outcomes is a critical first step for a leader to understand that their communication is critical to driving organizational success.
When a leader is committed to effective communication to drive organizational performance, the second key step is to prioritize comprehension over acknowledgment. Organizational leaders can produce the most effective foundational documents, but that does not ensure their ability to effectively communicate with their team. Leaders who want to drive performance with effective communication can contemplate what they are aiming for when communicating: acknowledgment or comprehension of the message. Speaking continuously without interaction, speaking “at” a group or speaking to motivate are ways leaders demonstrate they are more focused on delivering the message (acknowledged by the team with a “Yes, Ma’am” or “Yes, Sir”) and less on comprehension.
Focusing on comprehension when delivering messages requires a leader to plan for interaction with the intended audience and be inquisitive with their team to continuously determine how its members receive what the leader says. For instance, a leader who, as part of their vision, wants weapons lethality to be a key element of their training direction could state that they expect the team to be lethal with all weapons and weapon platforms. Any response solicited from the team would be considered acknowledgment.
This is also representative of transactional discussion: Message delivered, now do what you were told to do. Transactional messages are often met with action focused on completing a task without regard to understanding the intent and without defining processes and outcomes. A leader focused on performance outcomes would make this message transformational.
Transformational Approach
Making this message transformational and focusing on comprehension requires an approach by the leader to ask the team something like, “When I say I want lethality to be a core element of our organizational identity, what does that mean to you?” Allowing for this back and forth requires some humility and time management, but it will ensure that the senior leader better understands the perspective (in this case of lethality) of the team as its members contemplate what they are being asked to do and will soon formulate how they would/could do it. Field Manual 3-0 refers to this as fostering shared understanding through communication with staff and subordinates.
Leaders need to know they are not the arbiters of the comprehension or acknowledgment of whatever message they are communicating. In addition to a sincere commitment to being transformational over transactional, it takes a sincere commitment and repetition to feel comfortable in knowing when you are talking to or at someone, or effectively communicating with members of your organization. Many leaders may have had years of working with other leaders who did not exhibit the traits of a truly effective communicator or who did not communicate by giving direction to drive performance outcomes. In hierarchal organizations, especially where the prominence of rank or position correlates to skill proficiency, it can be difficult to address deficiencies or drive improvements, especially in skills and abilities such as effective organizational communication.
But if improvements and change are not realized in the practice and execution of effective communication, the institutions will continue to burden subsequent waves of next-level leaders to struggle to understand the difference between acknowledgment and comprehension while determining whether they are leading transactional organizations or transformational ones.
This is not an either-or debate. Even the best leaders and the best communicators should reexamine their commitment to communication that guides an organization’s direction and their proficiency at communicating effectively. Leaders should commit time and energy to train next-level leaders on elements of effective communication.
Robert Griggs is a task force senior trainer for the Leadership Training Program, National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California. He also is a senior consultant for JKAN Consulting. He served 26 years in the Army as an infantryman and infantry officer, mostly in airborne, Ranger and mountain units, and retired as a lieutenant colonel. He holds a doctorate in organizational development from Pennsylvania State University.